Cited Book: Endgame: Solving the Iraq Crisis

Republican Scott Ritter spent seven years in Iraq as an arms inspector for the United Nations. His 1998 resignation as the U.N. chief weapons inspector there made front-page headlines around the world. In Endgame, Ritter draws on his experiences to take us inside Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and to explain where U.S. policy in Iraq went wrong.

According to the blurb, Ritter describes in detail the ways that Saddam tried to foil inspectors by concealing his weapons programs. He brings readers with him inside some of Iraq’s most carefully guarded sites and shows us dramatic face-offs between U.N. inspectors and hostile Iraqi guards and officials. But Ritter criticizes the U.S. for squandering an international consensus on Iraq and trying to use the inspections process for uniquely American goals. He argues strongly against the proposed American military strike against Iraq, suggesting instead a bold and innovative solution to the long-standing crisis.

But in reality, Ritter is a bit like Wile E. Coyote going after Saddam as the Road Runner. The more Ritter can’t find any weapons the more convinced he became that Saddam had them. He admits one time his for sure nuclear facility turned out to be a pump house for luxury fountains at a compound for the Iraqi elite. Ritter is a superhawk. Even back in the 1990s he desperately itched for war on Iraq if even so much as a can of poison gas could be found to justify it. Most of the book is primarily about events prior in the 1990s. He leaves out some key facts, e.g. the sanction bombings or that his hero Chalabi was a convicted embezzler. He has absolutely no understanding of or curiosity about the motives of the USA. He takes the official statements completely at face value with the dedication of a high school drop out Republican. However, he does admit that Iraq had at most 100 weapons and was not a military threat at the time the USA invaded.